


i missed you

by antaam



Series: Sylvix Week 2019 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Running Away, too much hugging probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 13:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21055148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antaam/pseuds/antaam
Summary: felix loses sylvain, and then he finds him-Sylvix Week 2019 - Days 2&3 Modern AU - Coffeeshop AU - Letters





	i missed you

**Author's Note:**

> i missed day 2 so i just crammed it in here real quick

When Felix is fifteen, Sylvain stands on his porch with his head ducked low, his shoulders slumped, and the beginnings of a dark bruise flowering on his temple.

“I’m leaving,” he tells him. Felix can hear a car running, so he leans a little to peer over Sylvain's shoulders. He recognizes the car immediately, the chipping paint and defiant clusters of bumper stickers unmistakable. Miklan is behind the wheel, watching the two of them with an expression Felix is too far away to decipher.

Felix leans back and looks back up at Sylvain. 

“With him?” He asks. 

The smile that Sylvain offers is a pathetic thing, eyes glassy and dead. “With him.”

Felix’s own eyes narrow, suspicion itching at the back of his mind. He’s known Sylvain for nearly his entire life, and never _once_ had Sylvain wanted to go _anywhere_ with Miklan. The two of them being left alone together always left Sylvain with bruises and scrapes and casts, it left him with the brace around his knee he’d have to wear the rest of his life. The idea of them leaving together, to somewhere so far that they needed a car, that Sylvain felt the need to call Felix out to say goodbye-

Felix swallows around a lump in his throat. “Are you okay?”

Sylvain gives a valiant effort at keeping his smile intact, but Felix watches as it wavers, as the patchwork mask over his face crumbles and leaves him looking lost and vulnerable, the two year age gap between them dissolving in an instant. “I-” Sylvain bows his head lower, just a little, one hand raising to grab his own elbow, like he's holding himself together, “I’m not. But not because of him. It’s my choice.”

Sylvain looks so fragile, then, so close to shattering that the words seem like a lie. But Sylvain has never lied to Felix about this, not the way he lies to his parents and his teachers and anyone who noticed how often he had accidents. Felix doesn't want to believe him, but somewhere at the back of his mind, he does.

“Where are you going?” Felix asks, instead of pushing.

The smile is back, weaker this time and wobbly at the edges. “Can’t say.”

Felix doesn't know what to say. He grinds his teeth through the silence, trying to find his words, but they slip out of his grasp, and the longer he's quiet the more Sylvain shrinks away until he takes a step back, like he's leaving. Felix reacts on instinct, reaching out to grab at Sylvain's arm, and Sylvain stops dutifully. 

“Will you come back?” He grits out. His eyes are burning, like he’s going to cry. He refuses.

Sylvain is silent for a long time. Too long. Felix knows a _no_ when he hears one.

He considers leaving, then, turning and walking inside, slamming the door in Sylvain's face because if he wants to leave forever then _fine_, whatever, but he stamps down the urge. Instead, he lurches forward and throws his arms around Sylvain's waist, hugging him like he hasn't in- too long, probably.

It catches Sylvain off guard, and he goes utterly still. Then, like he's collapsing, Sylvain falls into him, wrapping his arms around Felix's shoulders and squeezing desperately, clinging like Felix is a rock in a storm. 

Sylvain is warm and solid even as he trembles, and something breaks in Felix when he thinks this could be the last time he'll ever know that. Desperate, breath shaky, he tries to commit it all to memory. Anything, everything, writing the feeling of Sylvain being here into his very being.

The moment breaks.

“Sylvain!” Miklan calls from the car, “We need to go!”

Sylvain squeezes him once, hard enough that Felix’s bones ache, and then moves to pull away. Felix doesn’t want to let go, wants to pull him inside and keep him safe from whatever’s hurt him, wants to tell him that there’s another choice, any other choice. 

He doesn’t.

Sylvain’s eyes are rimmed red when Felix releases him, and his voice is choked as he says, “Goodbye, Felix.”

Felix doesn’t say it back, can’t stand to. Instead, he watches in a teary, trembling silence as Sylvain retreats off the porch, tries to memorize his silhouette as he crosses the Fraldarius's dark yard.

Miklan pulls away the moment Sylvain is in the car, before the door is even closed. Felix doesn't even get a chance to wave.

Two days later, Sylvain is declared missing. 

When Felix overhears Mr. Gautier talking to his father, lamenting that he’ll have to begin vetting his employees for a suitable successor to his company, he thinks maybe it’s for the best.

\--

6 months later, two days after his birthday, Felix receives a letter with no return address.

His father hands it over with little fanfare, stacked between cards from distant relatives and business partners Felix has never met. He likely hadn't noticed anything amiss, but Felix stomach swoops the moment he sees the envelope, because he _knows_ that handwriting, remembers it from notes shoved in his locker at school, from words squished into the margins of his papers. Every other card is forgotten as Felix tears into it.

It’s a cheap greeting card, a black cat on the front and the words _Happy Purr-thday_ printed across the top. He laughs, more shock than mirth, and opens it, finds the whole interior covered in Sylvain’s cramped, neat handwriting.

_Felix,_

_Happy birthday!_

_I’m mailing this two weeks early, so if it’s late you can’t blame me, okay? I’m really trying here._

_Miklan told me not to send it. I think he thinks you’ll somehow figure out where we are, but I think he’s overreacting. How would you even know? Anyway, if I get dragged back to Fhirdiad because I wanted to tell you happy birthday, it’ll be worth it._

_I hope you’re actually celebrating this year. I know it’s hard. I know I made it harder. But a lot of people love you and you’re worth celebrating, you always have been. You deserve better than stewing and moping on the one day a year that's one hundred percent for you. I can't be there to drag you out of your room, so could you please drag yourself out? For me?_

_I know I shouldn't be lecturing you when I'm not even there. I wish I could be. I wish I was brave enough to tell you why I can't. _

_I hope someday I’ll be able to tell you everything. I know I’ll do it if I see you again and I can’t imagine a world where that doesn’t happen. Please just know that I never wanted to break our promise and leave you alone. _

_Wow, got real serious there for a minute. Sorry! It's your birthday! Don't worry about me, okay? Just have a good day and know I'm sending you every good vibe I can spare._

_Anyway, I’m running out of room here. Apparently six months makes me a real chatty Cathy. I'll try to write again soon, okay? Even if Miklan kills me for it._

_Your friend,_

_Sylvain_

Felix reads it, and reads it again. Tears burn in his eyes and his chest aches with something deep and hollow that reverberates through his whole being. The loneliness that’s defined his world the past half-year swells and abates in equal measure, knowing that Sylvain is missing him, too.

The part of him that desperately wants Sylvain back, wants him home and safe, tells him he should take this letter straight to the police. Who knows what they could do with a grocery store birthday card with no return address, but it had to be _something._

But he remembers Sylvain that night, dead eyed and defeated, saying, _“It’s my choice.”_

He tucks the letter into the bottom of his desk drawer. After a long, miserable consideration, he pulls out his phone and texts Ingrid, asking if she wants to celebrate his birthday late.

Her reply is an immediate yes, and he smiles despite himself.

\--

He waits for another letter, impatient and desperate. 

It never comes.

\--

At 21, the hole Sylvain left in Felix’s life is something he’s learned to live with, the same way he learned to live without Glenn, without Dimitri, without his father’s support.

He has an apartment with Ingrid in a college town near the Empire border, he’s halfway to a degree in veterinary science, and things aren’t _great,_ really, but they’re better. He’s coming into his own, carving out an exitence for _Felix_ in a world that had only ever been molded for Glenn. He's made friends, no matter how hard his prickly disposition had tried to stop him, and it's- good. He's good.

The last thing he expects, when he’s on the opposite side of town on a favor for Ingrid and ducking into an unfamiliar coffee shop for a quick fix, is to see Sylvain again.

At first, he thinks he must be hallucinating because somewhere along the line his mind had written off Sylvain as the same sort of unreachable that Glenn had become. Dead, for all intents and purposes, dead to _him_ because they were never going to meet again--and his mind reels because there’s no way that a dead man could be leaning against a coffee bar lamenting loudly to his coworker that business was slow.

But Felix knows that hair, knows that voice, knows that melodramatic expression. Somewhere, beneath the shock, beneath the disbelief, something long dead bursts back to life in his chest, and the travel mug he’d been holding slips from his hand and cracks loudly against the floor.

Sylvain whips around at the noise, somehow having missed the way the door chimed when Felix walked in, and his eyes go comically wide. Felix might have laughed if his brain hadn't been resetting.

They're both frozen, two deer caught in each other's headlights. Felix is afraid to blink, terrified that he'll break the illusion, that the moment will shatter and he'll gasp awake from a cruel dream.

Given a moment to process, Sylvain has no such reservations.

“Felix?” He says, already moving, pushing away from the counter to stand straight, “I- _Felix?”_

Felix swallows. "Yeah," replies distantly, feeling distinctly like he might faint.

_“Felix,”_ Sylvain repeats, like it’s the only word he knows, breathing it like it’s something utterly precious. Felix doesn’t think he’s ever heard his name said in a tone so full of _feeling,_ and the sound of it makes his heart stick in his throat.

Sylvain is rounding the bar, his eyes never straying from Felix, flickering over him like he’s trying to take him in. Felix does the same, finding Sylvain taller, thinner, favoring his bad leg more than he had when they were teenagers. There’s a new scar on his forehead, long and thin and disappearing behind his hairline, and his hair, once so carefully tousled, is longer and looser, free to fall in its natural, messy curls. 

Different, but unmistakably Sylvain.

“You-” Sylvain stops a couple feet from him, posture unsure, “You’re here.”

Felix nods. This is happening. Is it? He hopes so.

Silence falls over them. There are a thousand things Felix wants to say, a thousand questions he wants to ask, but all he can do is stand and stare, years of grief and loneliness tying his vocal chords into knots. 

“Is everything okay over there?”

Felix nearly jumps out of his skin, eyes snapping to a silver-haired man peeking out from behind the bakery display. He’s watching them with wide eyes, and he shrinks a little under Felix’s gaze, which he would feel bad about if his entire world hadn’t just been tipped upside down.

Broken out of his reverie, Sylvain tears his eyes from Felix’s face to look over his shoulder, “Yeah, Ashe, it’s fine," He assures him, "Um- are you gonna be okay if I take my break?”

The man, Ashe, flicks his eyes between Sylvain and Felix once then nods fast, “Of course!” He says, a little too enthusiastically, “Take as long as you need!”

Sylvain nods and then turns back to Felix. Before saying anything, he crouches down to pick up the coffee mug Felix had forgotten about completely, then stands and offers it with a little quirk of his lips.

Felix takes it, feels inexplicably more comfortable with something in his hands, and says, “We- should talk?”

Sylvain nods, swallows, shifts his weight. “Outside?” He asks with a meaningful nod toward Ashe who is very obviously trying not to watch them out of the corner of his eye and failing miserably.

Felix nods, and Sylvain steps around him to hold the door open. The air is cold outside, just on the cusp of winter, and it soothes something in Felix’s chest when he steps outside and fills his lungs with it. Sylvain walks him to one of the patio tables, but he doesn’t sit, so Felix doesn’t either. 

Before another awkward silence can catch them, Felix blurts, “I missed you.”

It surprises Felix as much as it does Sylvain. He watches with burning ears as Sylvain’s eyebrows shoot up and his eyes go wide, blinking owlishly once, twice, three times before his expressions melts into something soft and sad.

“I missed you, too,” He says, voice brimming with emotion, and he sags a little, like the words have lifted a weight off of him. 

Somehow, despite a childhood spent together, Felix feels it's the most honest they've ever been with each other. The thought makes his chest swell, and it makes him bold. He takes a halting step forward, and, moving slow enough so as to be easily stopped, he wraps his arms around Sylvain's middle.

The night he disappeared, Sylvain had hesitated. There is no trace of that now, as he hugs Felix back fiercely, hands twisting into the back of Felix’s coat, holding--_clinging_\--onto him in every way he can. He’s warm, like he’s always been, and he smells like coffee and cigarettes, and it’s different, so different, but it’s _him._

They're not teenagers anymore, but they hold each other like they did back then, desperate and painful and unwilling to let go.

They hold each other until Sylvain begins to tremble, begins to make quiet, fragile noises against Felix's shoulder. Then Felix holds him tighter, impossibly tighter, and lets his own tears soak into Sylvain's shirt.

Things aren’t the same, will never be the same. Years of hurt and loneliness and grief hang between them, unanswered questions and unspoken truths buried bitten back behind their teeth, but right now, with Sylvain here and alive and _here,_ Felix finds he really doesn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> i love hugs. also sylvain was still sending letters but he fucked up felix's address after the first time. might be a timestamp series we'll see.


End file.
